WHERE YOU BEEN!?

Good (early!) Morning brothers and sisters!

It has been a significant amount of time since I have had the opportunity to grace this hall in a very long time. Due to some unforeseen events in my life, mostly for the better, I had to step away abruptly and without warning. The TL;DR being that I have moved from North Carolina to Oregon and went back to college to gain a degree in Network Systems Administration (for now, with long term goals covering something much bigger). Currently I am an straight A student pulling a 4.0 GPA and just starting my third term/quarter as of today. TIME TO MAKE ORANGE JUICE!

Outside of my personal affairs and on to slightly more recent news, Blizzard Entertainment has started up alpha testing for the most recent addition to their World of Warcraft line, Legion. It is early days yet my friends, but I am excited about a whole host of possibilities! It surely seems like they are throwing everything and the kitchen sink into this one, and I for one, could not be happier (assuming they can deliver, HA!). Warlords of Draenor showed some promise in its infancy, but as the expansion grew in age some glaring issues started to show in some of its core philosophy. That is not to say that it did not have its merit, in my view it did have some interesting lore and game design, and the raids were far superior to anything we have seen yet as a whole. That said, the garrisons were a good idea in theory but were executed poorly, certain classes were just not performing well inside the raid scene for large portions of the expansion while others dominated for the same length of time. I also took issue with the lack of released content midway through the expansion as well. While I still hold that World of Warcraft is still a fantastic game, it seemed that my wanted design direction differed from what the Blizzard staff had in mind, which sadly lead to my eventual retirement from the game for a second time. This was not to be just a momentary detachment either,  I sincerely had no intention of ever returning this time. Interestingly enough, during my WoW hiatus a friend and I had a somewhat protracted conversation about it. The culmination of that discussion ended with me saying something to the effect of “There are only two things that Blizzard could do at this point to pull me back in….introducing Demon Hunters and making the story focal point about the legion again”. Funny how that worked out!

I have been desiring, to the point of pining for, demon hunters as a playable class for YEARS, ever since The Burning Crusade gave me that first real taste. While I still submit that I identify with the warrior at heart more, there has always been this strange attraction what the demon hunter seemed to be, at least in my own mind. And now, I am chomping at the bit to get in and start testing (legitimate testing mind you) what the WoW team has in-store for the player base. As has been the case…pretty much since always, I do not have alpha access. This is okay, perhaps my luck will change with the beta.

I will do a quick right up on all the Fury Warrior changes that I have come across in the near future, I just ask that everyone keep in mind that this is alpha and things are subject to change at any moment.

Here is to hoping that you all have an excellent holiday filled with Christmas cheer! Till next time friends, stay angry!

A Rage-aholic, addicted to the taste of blood and battle

Blood, Death, Destruction! A Fury Warrior craves these things. His mind given over to uncontrollable rage, driven by a singular purpose…..to cut the life out of his enemy in the most violent and visceral way possible, or to die bloody and broken in the only place he can truly call home: the battlefield.

 

 

Men, today we are here to talk about what it is to be a Fury Warrior. I wish to explore what our chosen spec REPRESENTS, what it should feel like as we play (my opinion anyway), and differences in theme and mechanics. As always, I encourage my fellow warriors to voice their perspectives on the matter, so let me hear your battlecries in the comments.

What we know and understand as Fury is an adaptation of real world warriors from our own history. I am sure the word Viking is known to many of you and if not, where the hell have you been the past 500 years? I am not well versed enough in the Nordic traditions and histories to say that the Vikings did it first, but I sense that most of us draw that to mind first when thinking of berserkers. The fundamentals of our spec are rooted here. They fought with a near uncontrollable, trance-like fury which may have been caused by drugged food/wine, intense psychological conditioning or through a sever personality disorder. The means is irrelevant, the result is a half-crazed madman who throws all caution to the wind to utter demolish enemy resistance, accomplished feats on the battlefield that border on the inhuman (seriously, check into some of the things these guys did in battles, its mind blowing). These ideas are important as they give us context and clarity, but there are some contrasts that just dont translate. The prime example is that in the World of Warcraft Fury is defined by the use of 2 two-handed weapons. I used to do heavy weapons fighting in the SCA when I was younger and I will tell you that there is no possible way that a person can effectively do this, it is literally impossible. Weapons like this are long and heavy, the weight distribution alone would keep all but world class strongmen from swinging the thing with any amount of lethal force in one hand, and even then I am skeptical. This is where the fantasy comes in, it allows for things that are just out of reach to then become possible, much like wielding a pair of two-handers. It’s not just weaponry that is amplified in the genre either, just look the idea’s you read in books or see in film regarding the “rampaging berserker”! These figures are the epitome of rage, the pinnacle of what is possible through force of will and hate alone, it is the defining characteristic above and beyond everything else. Take all this and juice it up with even more fantasy flair and what do you get? A whirlwind of choler and steel who’s mind knows only anger, who’s sole reason for existence is to shred his enemies and die a glorious warriors death. Bloodlust. Warmongering. Insanity. Call it what you will because in the end, it doesnt mean shit. All that matters to us is the violence, the screams of dying men, gore saturated ground and glory.

All of this well and good in theme, but in practice…..not so much. Years ago I was asked my GM why he played a warrior, and more specifically, why he played fury. He proceeded to tell me that after trying each class briefly the warrior was the one that felt the most visceral and fit his playstyle best. Since then it has been a recurring thought in my brain that we dont choose our class so much as it chooses us. Think about what drew your favored class in the first place and I think you will begin to see what I mean. I am a naturally hot tempered person and after the military noticed that  not only do I not shy away from conflict, I look for it. This has led me to some idiotic places in the past and I am sure that wont change anytime in the near future, but I do realize that it is part of my personality and am comfortable with it. Mix a person with an aggressive personality and competitive nature with a fantasy book or game and see which character they most identify with; I’m willing to bet the warrior. Playing a warrior allows me to see a part of myself in world where I can wage war at the drop of hat, where the word war is not some cultural taboo that causes all the flaccid hippies out there to force their opinion down my throat and expect me to agree, where I can break the bones of those who stand in my way….and it is accepted. The warrior class is as much a calling as the military was, and I truly believe that a lot of people in WoW find themselves in similar position with their respective classes (except the FotM crowd…thats a discussion for another day though). Unfortunately, I do not see Fury playing so well these days.  I do remember having the most fun with it in WotLK, the furious button mashing being something that I enjoyed (some hated it, but I think it was the best its ever been). With the inclusion of Colossus Smash though, what we have is a more controlled and tactical playstyle much more fitting of arms with the pooling gameplay really accentuating the idea of a seasoned soldier waiting for an opening the punishing them heavily. Now dont mistake my words, CS and raging blow do go well together mechanically, giving some interesting game play (some would say depth….I am not them) but the problem is that “controlled and tactical” are not in the vocabulary of a freaking Berserker. Fury, ideally, should be a fast paced, button mashing death machine, capable of overcoming opponents by raining down a flurry of furious blows upon the heads of the opposition leaving no time to react. It’s all about the offensive for fury. With the Warlords of Draenor expansion dropping in the next few months, we see the developers attempting to make haste more useful for warriors across the board and while initially I was pissed about it, I am starting to see some options opening up for us with it. Headlong rush allows us to shorten the GCD with haste which is a step in the right direction, but there is more that could be done.

– Remove CS from Fury, this will remove the idiotic pooling/miniburst gameplay we have now

– New Ability: Massacre/Carnage: heavy hitting attack with a cd, but does not need to be proc’d

– Remove Wildstrike, nobody likes it and its a retooled combat rogue ability anyway.

– Give us Cleave back and buff it to be worth using as a rage dump (cleave fits the fury theme better than heroic strike)

– Bring back Flurry but alter it to make the next 2-3 abilities incur no GCD instead of giving 25% faster attack speed

– Heavily Increased Rage generation. You should be fighting to keep the rage bar DOWN as fury not straining to get it up like an old man.

– BESERKER STANCE, give it back. Fury only stance that increases auto attack speed and crit damage by 5%

Numbers balancing aside, I think this is a good place to start. Unquenchable Thrist removes the cd from Bloodthrist and gives us a spammable ability that doesnt rage starve us (finally). Raging blow would still functions as it does now, procing from BT. Cleave would be the rage dump, which would accentuate the wild swinging of our weapons in combat far more than that piss ant of an ability wildstrike. Additionally, the furious strikes talent could/would be changed to affect cleave for a smoother rage dump process if the user wanted it over unquenchable Thrist. I know, I know….we all want heroic strike back and I understand but heroic strike just doesnt fit fury as well as cleave does from a theme point of view (it is close though and ultimately interchangable). Now we add in the new ability Massacre/Carnage (or whatever ability name fits really) that gives us a heavy hitting ability with a medium cooldown, I’m thinking 8-10 seconds for CD. I would see it prioritized UNDER raging blow, thus it would have slightly less damage but giving us some decent damage still if we are really unlucky with raging blow procs (yes, it does happen). Finishing off our damaging abilities with Whirlwind for big aoe situations with the always wonderful meatcleaver. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE! With the proposed changes to flurry you then are able to really chain you abilities together. And with increased rage gen you will ALWAYS be hitting something, even if it is just cleave.

This is crap I came up with in less than an hour, obviously damage numbers would need to be adjusted for abilities and rage cost would need to be looked at heavily, but I feel that it is head and shoulders over what we have on live and the proposals for warlords. Frankly, I dont care what they do in the long haul as long as I FEEL like a fury warrior again and I think far too many people overlook the feeling aspect of it in favor of “Fuck it big numbers”. Remember, numbers can be tuned at any time….we MAYBE get once an expansion (usually prior to launch) to affect how the class/spec plays as whole.

I want to hear those idea’s people, leave me a comment and start a dialogue as your opinions have real worth, even if we disagree. So until next time friends:

“May your swords stay wet, like a young girl in her prime”

-Themetalbeard

You no take candle!

It is high time again friends, a new expansion is set to release early in November and there are a great deal of changes that are coming. Today’s focus shall be that of ability pruning and why, I feel, that it is a bad thing overall. As of this posting this is the most updated set of patch notes which you may find here: WoD Beta Patch Notes

The first section will be those abilities that have been removed completely from the game for all specs, and I will briefly give my thoughts on each of them and why (or not) its a bad idea.

– Berserker Stance has been removed

Ah the glorious berserker stance and the name sake of this blog, it has had a long and storied history within the world of warcraft. Time unfortunately has not been kind to this pose of bloodshed, systematically removing any real benefit it had. I am somewhat on the fence about it as in its current format it is not very useful (it does have some roll in dps “scumbagging”) and SHOULD be removed. However, I would rather them take the approach of sanding it down and reworking it from the ground up as a fury only stance rather than just flat out removing it. Ideally stances should be approximate to how Death Knights approach their presence, with arms in battle, fury in berserker, and protection in defensive. That is looking at it from the view of pve, pvp changes this somewhat with stance dancing more frequently (primarily to defensive). Alternatively, give fury bonus’s for being in that stance (in addition to whatever the stance might do), perhaps faster auto attacking or increased chances to crit and bonuses on crit damage seeing as it is a crit dependent spec. I am unsure on what they could do to fix it but I would hate for it to go away just because the developers are uncreative.

– Cleave has been removed

This is another that has been around for awhile, though it has undergone virtually no change since its inception. This is another ability that I would rather see altered slight or buffed rather than being removed. It functions like heroic strike, with reduced damage but hitting multiple targets, so why not give it to fury in place of heroic strike (seeing as the developers are want to shove wild strike down our throats) and buff the damage. Its a simple change, and one that most people would just right off as “uncreative” or “not fun”….but not every ability has to be fun, just functional. Cleave fits in the vein for fury very nicely as a bloodthristy berserker diving into the fray and swinging at anything that gets in his way. I am sure there are better idea’s for this, but I have yet to think of one.

– Demoralizing Banner has been removed

I do not care so much that this ability is gone. It did what it was supposed to do while on live, but ultimately I never saw much as much more than a raid cooldown (or a pvp one). There may be some of you out there that absolutely love it, but I wonder what those reasons may be? Is it just because it was a powerful ability, or is there something more to it that I am just not seeing? All in all, I can write this one off without any sort of feeling on the matter.

– Flurry has been removed

Mixed emotions here again. This little bugger has been with us for quite awhile, working behind the scenes. Passive attack speed increase for 3 hits….not bad. Not exceptional, but not bad. It does fit with fury’s theme of a high octane killing machine, but that is about where it stops for me. I assume that this has been taken out to help with blizzard pushing haste on us, but again that is only an assumption. Frankly as long as they rebalance the class/spec accordingly I do not see this as particularly detrimental.

– Throw has been removed

It’s been useless for years, ’nuff said.

So that sums up all of the flat out removed abilities, so now we will move on to those that have been purged from specific specs. Most of these I can justifying being changed, though there are exceptions that I will get into here.

– Deep Wounds is now only available to protection warriors

Year’s ago warriors used to be able to spec into a specific bleed via the arms tree. This was called deep wounds and in most cases was a go to choice for the raiding warrior for a extra bit of passive damage. Keep in mind we also had rend in those days. Functionally, this change is irrelevant to me because all we are losing is some passive damage that most people do not even think about. However, there is that small part of my brain that is nagging me about this. If I cut into someones flesh with a weapon….the guy is going to bleed profusely, even more so when its a big meaty two handed axe (or two in fury’s case). For the most part I do not really care, nor do I believe that the vast bulk of the community does either, so I am left just shrugging my shoulders in antipathy. I guess this change could affect those pvp warriors out there with breaking rogue/druid stealth though and really any extra edge you can get in the arena is only a good thing for the individual. Perhaps blizzard will be smart and frontload the damage lost into other abilities, though I somehow doubt they will look that far into it.

– Mocking Banner is now available to protection warriors

Looks like we had our mocking/intervene dash crushed. Did not matter all that greatly in raids, in my opinion, though I suppose it may have had some niche rolls in some very rare occurences. This is more of a pvp nerf than anything else as it will limit our mobility somewhat when there is not a target to intervene to. Again, this is a wash in my book.

– Rallying Cry is no longer available to protection

So apparently blizzard is stripping out the raid cooldowns from tanks and handing them to the dps……I honestly have no idea what the fuck is going on inside that place, but common sense does not seem to be it. Look, I do understand that some tanks were being utilized for raid cooldown usages, but I seriously doubt that the problem was big enough to warrant giving those survivability cd’s to dpsers. Perhaps at the very top end, those chasing world first, this may have been a problem but they are a fraction of a percent of the entire wow community. Those individuals will do whatever it takes to secure that pole position, so why for fuck’s sake are you changing this for the rest of us? The tanks job, is to 1) stay alive, 2) hold aggro, 3) do whatever he can to keep the rest of the raid alive, within his means. It is a bit moronic to change one of those at this stage of the game, in fact, its merely change for changes sake. I call bullshit here blizz.

– Recklessness is now available only to Arms/Fury

This is fair enough. I never really understood why protection had access to this in the first place. I take the stance of the old school tank where damage never really mattered all that much. In more recent expansions this was in some way a defensive increase as well, but frankly I never thought it fit the theme of a tank too well. Good riddance.

– Shield Wall is now only available to Protection

Fuck you blizzard. Seriously. THE main defensive cooldown for the warrior class as a whole, a defining feature of being able to turtle up and mitigate massive amounts of damage for a short time. I still remember when this was 60% flat reduction. I will admit that for fury it needed to go, the bloodthristy man slayer does not swap to sword and board but instead defends himself by slaughtering all those before him. Arms on the other hand is a seasoned soldier of multiple battles and wars and should know that sometime its best to fight from the defensive. I will talk more about the themes of each warrior spec at a later date, but frankly I think removing this from arm’s toolkit is another of blizzards passive aggressive warrior nerfs that it has been known for over the years. Remove it for fury, not for arms. And for fucks sake, make it 60% again, this crap we have now pales in comparison to what it used to be, and there are far better defensives in other classes so you have no reason not to.

– Thunderclap is no longer available to Fury

Didn’t matter, Doesn’t matter, Wont matter. Sucks to lose the debuff from it, but nothing drastic here.

– Whirlwind is now available only to Arms and Fury Warriors

A fair change and one that fits well. 1 out of 15 aint bad right?

Naturally, all of this is subject to change, it is beta after all. I am not happy with these changes over all, nor do I think that the warrior community should be either. Some things I see are justified, some you could make an argument for, but most seem to be change for no other reason than change itself. It has become very apparent over the years that those in dealing with warrior changes have no idea what a warrior is, that each spec is supposed to have its own distinct flavor and playstyle. Expanding on that briefly, it would appear that blizzard has no idea what each of the warrior spec represents ( i would argue the same about a bulk of the player base as well frankly) nor how they should play. Some things are definitely open to interpretation, but a lot of it is not.

I hope that reader will keep in mind that a bulk of this post is based on MY opinion, and as is with most opinions I believe it to be the correct one, though I am always open to discussion and would encourage those who have spent the time to read all of this to leave a comment(s) below and let me know what you think about it all. My next post I will likely be going into the theme of each of the warrior specs to further outline my view points on the warrior and how I came to certain conclusions.

I wish to thank you for your time, and hope to see you all on the battlefield, until next time:

Keep those swords bloody!

Berserker Stance Updates & News: Every Monday

So I think from this point forward, Monday will be the day that I put up new material here. I have nothing else happening on Monday’s and it gives me ample time to get source material while coming up with the subject for the next weeks post. Seems like a solid plan!

*EDIT*

So Instead of just posting once a week with the subject matter being completely random, I will be testing out a 3 days a week posting schedule and separating into 3 groups: Blog related news, All the ranting and ravings of World of Warcraft warriors (the main function of this blog I might add), and progress reports on the as-of-yet unformed band that I am planning on putting together. I will give it two weeks and see how well it goes as far as my ability to post that regularly and make changes if it proves to be too much.

Keep that rage a’ rockin’

 

Berserker Stance Updates & News: Every Monday

Themetalbeard  (WoW Warrior): Every Wednesday

Blasting Bloody Vocals (Piecing together my band): Every Friday

Flesh and Blood to Digital

Well met creatures of the internet!

As a first posting to this I decided that an introduction of the person behind the screen would be a wise decision and great place to start. So have the wench fetch you drink and food, pull up that chair and open yer ears. Here we go:

While my family will know me as Brian, those traversing the digital web work may have heard me by another: Metalbeard. A fitting name for a warrior and one that has struck fear into the hearts of many in just the few short years since I took up the mantle and will continue to do so as long as I draw breath! Now you may be asking yourself why and how in the world I came up with such a magnificent name and the answer is very simple: I have a beautiful head of hair….on my face. After my stint in the armed services (which I will talk more about later) I decided that I was tired of shaving every single bloody morning, so I…..stopped. After a  few months of letting my glorious man mane grow I had a beard that extended down to my sternum and getting quite wild. And that is when tragedy stuck yours truly. An unknown family function had flown underneath the beards radar and reared its ugly head very much last minute and in a frantic rush to “clean up” I cut the facial crown too short. And thus the reign of the first beard had to end. It looked horrible in all honesty, so ended up razoring the whole thing off. Since then, however, I have never taken the beard off completely off, though I do trim it with some frequency when it gets “too long” for those uppity folk in public who think it looks unprofessional.

So after growing my locks out and maintaining them for a few years I came to the realization that many people sport facial hair in varying fashion and that it was becoming a bit of normal occurrence in the places that I frequent. So in a moment of hipster crisis I started looking for a way to spruce up the look and set me apart from the crowd. And that when it dawned on me……add adornments to the beard itself instead of varying the style and length. I stumbled across some amazing viking metal “beard beads” that looked bloody awesome. I have yet to purchase them because I am unsure of the quantity that I will need, but within the next month or so I will be buying a bulk shipment of them to finish out the look. Now most of the pictures of people I have seen with these (or similar items) attached to their facial hair has been in small numbers, maybe 3 or 4 at the absolute most. Well thats not me. In fact I will be taking it the extreme and lining every inch of facial hair I can with them, thus a metal beard. It is something that I have talked about doing for awhile now and just have not had the time, money and motivation to do up until recently. Of course pictures will be posted as soon as the process is completed (before and after naturally). So you will have more of a reason to come back other than just my awesome personality, bwahahaha.

Now the purpose of this post (and this blog) is not to talk about my beard but to give the reader a bit of insight into the person writing this massive wall of text. GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!!! Yeah, yeah…I’m going. The best place to start is….well obviously the beginning right? Right. I was born in a small town in Tennessee called Tullahoma back in 1985. My biological father was a trucker and was away from home for weeks at a time and so my early memories of him are basically non-existent, though I do have some old photos and stories my mother has shared with me. My mom had me at the very young age of 17, and to all those wondering, I was indeed a mistake! Those first five years for us were hard times. We were living in a utility trailer which was 1 room with 1 bathroom and that was it. Money was tight to the point where my mother had to starve just so I could have food and the place where the trailer was located was out in the middle absolutely nowhere. How she made it through that time I will never know. Fast forwarding a few years, my sister was born. Now I do remember asking my mother when she was pregnant to make absolutely CERTAIN that I got a baby brother and she just laughed at me saying that I was to have a sister. I was FURIOUS! She was not even born yet and I already hated her. Now you may be thinking that I am joking….I am quite serious. Pretty much all through our childhood her and I were at odds with one another. She would call out saying I was picking on her or some such nonsense while I was in a completely different room, and then just snicker when I would get punished. So in retaliation in one particular moment of absolute brilliance I swiped her barbie dolls and ripped off all their heads then proceeded to tie them by the hair to the ceiling fan of her room while she was off somewhere else. I found it quite hilarious when she came in a few hours later and turned on the switch to her light and fan and started screaming bloody murder.

Trudging on, my father walked out on my mother never to return a few years later, I’m thinking i was about 6 at the time, leaving my mother to raise 2 children on her own. It is because of that one act alone that I despise him and have avoided any attempts of him trying to get into contact with me. Mom ended up going to college for chemical engineering and work two jobs in Raleigh, NC while raising my sister and I. Now prior the age of 10 I was a speed demon of a kid, running all over the place and you couldnt keep me locked down for very long. I was a lean, VERY tan little boy. Moving to Raleigh changed all that. There were very few children around (i remember 2 and I didnt particularly care for them or their parents) and the neighborhood was not really all that great either, so I was forced to stay inside most of the time. At the same time I was introduced to video games, and obtaining my first nintendo as a christmas gift. From that point forward I was hooked, if it was a video game I wanted to play it and all things considered for my mom, it was cheap entertainment and had tons of replay value for me. The unfortunate side effect of this was weight gain. I spent every minute of every day that was free playing that nintendo and sitting on your butt, eating and gaming does not a healthy body make. I was the typical awkward fat kid pretty much all the way up through my sophomore year of high school.

I want to hit these next few points home. Yes I was bullied heavily (pun intended! XD ) for my weight. The neighborhood bully would chase me as soon as I got off the bus and attempt to beat the crap out of me on a weekly basis, though most times he was unsuccessful as I was relatively fast for a fat kid and fear is a good motivator to keep your feet pounding tread. I had to deal with people treating me like absolute garbage on a daily basis, everything from disgusting looks to outright physical abuse. The physical aspects stopped on 1 day that I remember very well. I had come to school in a foul mood and generally not feeling all that well. There was a guy who at the time I called “friend”, not understanding what that word actually ment, and we shared 2 or 3 classes in the morning together and so we used to chat regularly when time permitted. In what I can only assume was a stab at getting me in a better mood he started messing around, telling jokes and trying to trip me up a bit on the way to the next class, which was all well and good and I even did a little back. Obviously with me getting in on it he had to escalate and proceeded to start trying to smack the books out of my hand to the floor, at which point I told him to knock it off. This only fueled him unfortunately and after about 30 seconds he finally sent all the things in my hands to the floor in a flying mess. At this point the only thing that I can think of that made these next events happen was that it was a perfect storm of bad mood, bad timing, and pent up rage. When he finally succeeded, something in my mind snapped. I decked this kid square in the mouth sending him tumbling back into the chalk board. He was rightfully pissed and leaped at me thrashing. Now at this point I’m about 5’6 and weighing somewhere about 210 lbs, he was 5’4ish and maybe 115. The exact details of what happened I can not recall but at some point during the scuffle I picked him up and choke slammed him onto the top of a desk causing it to collapse and break at the legs. The remaining events are irrelevant, minus one, 3 of the kids who used to bully me were in that class and watched everything happen, and never attempted any type of physical conflict with me again. Respect is rarely given freely in this world, and must usually be earned. Remember that.

High School for me was fairly uneventful. I joined the school band, getting any classes related to it that I could get my hands on: Concert, Advanced, Marching and Jazz. I had found a major passion in my life for the first time and one that has stuck with me to this day. We were top contenders as well which only fueled my fire for more. My first year we made it to the nationals in marching band, though we placed 9th or 10th, it was still an amazing experience. Outside of band my high school life was boring. I studied, gamed, played music, hung out with friends…though I never really partied. After I was finished I ended up working full time as an assistant manager at a local diner for a few year and at a grocery store for a year before that. Shortly after turning 20, and on a whim, I enlisted into the US Army. I shipped out feb. 2nd to Ft. Benning Georgia for my new (and chosen by me) MOS: Infantry. Now I have had friends and family ask me over the year why on earth would I have picked that specialty over all the options available to me? The answer is really very simple, I wanted it. The way I saw it, and still do, if you are going to sign up in a time of war why not be the guy kicking in doors? I wanted nothing to do with combat engineers, cooks, accounting….I wanted to be on the “frontlines” as it were. Here is the short version of my career: enlisted in feb. 2006, graduated “boot camp” may 2006, airborne school for 2 weeks, assigned to Ft. Drum, NY. First deployment late july 2006, returned late october 2007, Went to Ranger School in june 2008, august 2008 joined Ranger 2nd Batt and deployed 2 weeks later, returned april 2009, reenlisted and sent to Ft. Stewart GA and attached to 3rd ID, Finished enlistment oct 26th 2011. I will leave my military history at that, but if you have questions regarding it or wish for me to talk more about it, I will do so gladly.

The infantry made me do some serious growing up in ridiculously short amount of time, and for that I am thankful as I believe I needed it. It turned that weak kid that I was into a man that will respect the rights and opinions of others….to a point. I dont back down from conflict anymore, instead I run AT it. I’m no longer afraid of getting ass beat, as I am confident in my abilities to defend myself. If a conversation gets too heated, I walk away for a moment, then come back to it for more. If it is one thing the service has taught me, its that running away from your problems or hiding behind another solves nothing and usually makes it worse.

So why is any of this relevant? Well those experiences shaped who I am today and without even a single one of them I can not say with certainty that I would be the same person. I started as a video game warrior at a young age, to a soldier as a young man, and have come back to my digital roots with real world experience. It is odd how things can come full circle sometimes, but looking back on it all not really unexpected.

-Metalbeard